It was a bizarrely nice weekend in Chicago: 60 degrees and sunny on Saturday. That meant an epic hike, a serious recovery day, and not a ton of fiddle making.
I did get into the shop a bit, though I didn’t accomplish all that much. I did the rough sawing of the top, which went well. Notice how thick the wood is. In the future, I’d opt for thinner material as this has turned out to be a pain.
Top cut out, I marked the initial edge thickness at 6mm.
Confession: since I spent that long day carving the top of Davide, I’ve been dealing with a wicked case of trigger finger in my right thumb. Basically, it’s an inflammation of the tendon in my thumb caused by, no surprise, overuse. It’s kinda like tennis elbow, and it hurts like hell. So, given that I like making fiddles and would like to continue doing so, I am paying close attention to took ergonomics even as I am toughing up my hands. To that end, I replaced the handle of my main carving gouge with something much easier on the hands. That’s a chunk of old applewood in a shape that felt good in my hands. Carving with it is so much easier already.
I spent a bit of time carving, but didn’t get very far. The dremel tool makes much more sense for cutting the rough arches than it did when carving the little top. I got the long arch and 3 of the 5 cross arches rough cut.
